Walking with Matuszewski, who saw me off, I thought how I had never seen a city like Warsaw—the broad, completely empty streets, the blocks of frozen mud creating clods impossible to traverse or even, in many cases, to leap over, human figures more reminiscent of lumpen bundles, their heads grown into their fur collars. In their midst, the carriages, gleaming with lacquer, with the ornate initials of their owners, their coats of arms, their feathers, medallions. Vanity after vanity in this world made out of ice. My whole body was shaking from the cold, and tears were flowing from my eyes, and I could not tell whether they were on account of nervousness or cold.
It was early morning, and wagons of firewood, harnessed to slow, heavy horses, were standing at the gates of households while the peasants, wrapped in their warmest clothes, carried the wood in bundles tied with string and set them into piles. Some well-dressed Armenian was opening up his warehouse, which had a glass window; I glimpsed in that sheet of glass my own reflection, and it actually hurt to see myself looking so pathetic. Who was I, and what had happened to me? Where was I supposed to go, and what was I to say? What were they going to ask me, and in what language would I respond to them?
Suddenly it seemed to me that those decorations I once fleetingly envisioned as the whole world had now faded and aged so that no one could possibly be taken in by them today. The illusion is so imperfect, hideous and crippled. We are living in Hayah’s board game—we are the little figures molded out of bread by her nimble fingers. We move around the circles drawn over the board, meeting one another, and everyone is a task and a challenge for everyone else. And now we are approaching the decisive place—one toss of the dice and we will gain or lose everything.
Who would Jacob become if the game let him win here? He’d turn into one of those self-assured, arrogant people who go for ostentatious pleasure rides through the streets of this northern city in their carriages. He’d live like they do, emptily and sluggishly. The spirit would leave him in shame, not as it entered him, but with a disappointed sigh. Or it would slip out of his body like a fart or a belch. Jacob, my beloved Jacob, would become a piteous convert, and in the end, his children would be able to pay their way into their noble titles. The entire path we’ve traveled up till now would lose its reason and its meaning. We’d be stuck here, on this little stopover, like prisoners. We would have mixed up our immense objectives with just another pause along the way.
How can I talk without saying anything? With what sort of vigilance can I equip myself so that I won’t be seduced by the game, by smooth words? We studied this, and he tried to teach us.
I prepared well. I left all my money and a few valuables for my son with Marianna Wo?owska, I put my books in order, and I bound together my writings with a string. As God is my witness, I was not afraid. I actually even felt cheerful to be attending such a ceremonious occasion, since I knew from the very beginning, when I thought of this plan, that I was doing the right thing, and that I was doing it for Jacob, even if he would curse me for it, even if he never let me see him again.
This I knew with ever greater certainty, but it tired me, and at night I could not sleep, so much did my recurring memories boil my blood. For it seemed to me that sudden esteem had altered Jacob beyond recognition, that he had started to care much more about his clothing and his carriage than he did about the great idea he had to convey to others. Now he busied himself with shopping and perfumes. He preferred the Christian barber to shave his beard and trim his hair; he would tie a perfumed handkerchief around his neck and call it a stock tie. In the evenings, women would massage oil into his hands, because he had complained that they were getting chapped from the cold. He would chase after women, give them presents he would purchase using our common funds, which Osman and I had already been grumbling about back in Ivanie. The change took place after he started seeing bishops and bargaining with them with Moliwda’s help. It was like doing trade, like in Craiova at the office, as in Izmir, when he went around with a pearl or a precious stone to a meeting in order to sell it. I accompanied him many times and know that in no respect did that differ from this commerce here. There he would sit at a table, and he would take the jewel out of its silk pouch, place it on a piece of cloth, having also set up the candles to put it in the best possible light, and in that way the beauty of the merchandise came out. And here we were the merchandise.
As I walked in this way through that frozen city, I remembered that particular evening in Salonika when the Spirit entered Jacob for the first time. Jacob was drenched in sweat, and fear had dulled his eyes, and the air around us got so thick that it seemed to me that we were moving slower and speaking slower, as though suspended in honey. And everything then was true; so true the whole world hurt, for you could feel how unwieldy it was and how far removed from God.
And then and there, young and unseasoned, we were in our proper place; God spoke to us.
And now everything has become untrue, this whole city—painted lightly on a panel, as the background is painted for puppets in little market fair theaters. And we, too, are changed, as if someone had cast an evil spell on us.
I walked down those streets and had the impression that everything was looking at me, and I knew that I would have to do what I had planned in order to save not only Jacob, but all of us, and our road to salvation, since here, in this flat country, it had begun to twist and turn in disturbing ways, to turn back on itself and to mislead.
I believe there was one other person in our havura who knew what I was going to do. That was Hayah Shorr, now Rudnicka or Lanckoron′ska—it was hard for me to remember all those new last names. I could distinctly sense her supporting me, knew that she was with me even from afar, and that she understood my intentions quite well.
At first, Jacob’s testimony was read to us. It took a long time, and it was in Polish, so we did not understand it all. Jacob’s answers sounded artificial in that official style of speech, and untrue. Then one of the priests solemnly warned us not to listen to any further “fairy tales” from Jacob Frank, nor to believe his stories about the Prophet Elijah or other matters he did not even wish to mention, not wanting to give them any weight.
A little priest was chiding six defendants, all adult men . . . In the end, he made the sign of the cross in the air above us, and I felt like Judas—for I had to tackle the matter everyone else was too repulsed by to take in hand.